


Abu Dhabi Redux

by KitsJay



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: AU, Gen, cabin pressure meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:30:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitsJay/pseuds/KitsJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If MJN were not an airdot, but rather some other kind of business. Say a petshop?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abu Dhabi Redux

“Douglas,” Carolyn said sweetly to her cashier. It was that type of sweet that reminded Douglas of a venomous snake: very pretty on the outside, very poisonous when it struck. He looked up casually. 

“Yes, Carolyn?”

“Douglas, have you been, by any chance, teaching the parrots phrases again?”

Douglas feigned innocence. “No, I don’t think so. Why would you ask?”

Unbidden, and with execrable timing, one of the parrots squawked. “Douglas is a god, Douglas is a god!”

Carolyn’s foot was tapping in an ominous way.

“I can’t _imagine_ where they learned—” Douglas began.

“Shut up, Douglas,” Carolyn interrupted him with an imperious wave of her hand. “These are parrots. They have a finite number of things which they can learn in that walnut sized brain of theirs, and I—”

“Speaking of walnut sized brains,” Douglas transitioned smoothly, “Good morning, Martin.”

“Morning, Douglas,” Martin said, casting a quick suspicious glance at the pair of them by the birdcages. “Cleaned out the rabbit hatches yet?”

“No, Martin, I was just about to do that when I realised that I really didn’t want to,” Douglas said blandly.

“Douglas, as the manager of this store, I have to tell you that your work ethic is appalling! What if I simply didn’t do the things that I ‘didn’t want to do’?” said Martin.

Douglas appeared to consider it. “Then you would get sacked. I, of course, would not, because I remembered to put a certain other young employee on the task.”

“Oh, Douglas, thanks so much,” said employee gushed as he ran up, smelling vaguely of shaved pine and rabbit excrement. “That was brilliant! I love bunny rabbits!”

“Douglas, how many times do I have to remind you that Arthur is not your personal servant?” Martin said with a sigh. 

“At least as many times as he continues to act like it.”

Carolyn was staring at her son with a look of bemusement, annoyance, and resignation; it was a familiar look and no one gave it much attention, including Carolyn.

“I am going to the back,” Carolyn announced. “I am going to balance the accounts. It seems that feeding, housing, and taking care of an entire shop’s worth of animals is more expensive than the average layman would imagine. Shocking, I know. If anyone disturbs me…” 

She trailed off, making certain that she had all their eyes on her, then drew a slow finger across her throat. With a faint whiff of perfume that she used to disguise the musky scent of the ferrets, she stalked off to the back room.

“Ugh,” Martin said. “You know how she gets when she does the books.”

“I do know,” Douglas nodded. “Which is why if I were you—”

“But you’re not me,” Martin interrupted crossly. “I would never come in late like you do, or leave early, or pretend that the puppy you bought for your daughter has always been in that cage until it mysteriously disappeared, or convince that poor man that the Russian tortoise you sold him was actually a Galapagos-"

“Shame on him for believing me, I should think,” murmured Douglas.

Martin shook his head. “My point is, I have integrity.”

He tilted his head back in the air, confident in his knowledge that he was clearly the superior worker.

“Oh, Martin,” Douglas called, as if just recalling something. Martin paused. “Did you forget to do something last night before you went home?”

He could see the gears clanking away in that thick, curl-bound skull of Martin’s.

“No?”

“Really? Nothing to do with the temperature control of the iguana cage, then?” 

Martin’s back visibly stiffened. His shoulders abruptly climbed somewhere around his ears. He whirled around, eyes wide in panic. “Oh, God.”

“Oh, so you _did_ forget.”

“Oh, God, Douglas, she’ll kill me!”

“Yes, Martin, she probably will.”

“That wretched thing was ten years old,” Martin babbled, pacing in terrified circles. “She loved it!”

“Probably a distant relative of hers,” Douglas acknowledged.

“Douglas, what am I supposed to do?”

“Well, fortunately for you, I came in early and noted said temperature and revised it to its proper 30 degrees.”

“Oh. Oh, well, thank you, Douglas,” Martin said, relaxing.

Douglas hated to burst this new-found bubble of relief, but—what was he saying, he relished every moment of it. “ _Un_ fortunately for you, said lizard appeared to be rather… inanimate.”

Both their eyes darted to the terrarium where Carolyn’s pride and joy, a massive, foul-tempered iguana lay basking on a rock under a special heat lamp. It was curiously still. 

“Maybe she won’t notice,” Martin said without any real hope in his voice.

“Or maybe she will.”

“Or maybe…” Martin’s eyes so rarely lit up from the catch and whir of thinking that Douglas immediately recognised the rare gleam of a harebrained—no pun intended—scheme hatching in the corners of his mind. 

“No.”

“But you don’t—” Martin whined.

“No, Martin, whatever it is, it won’t work,” Douglas said firmly.

“You don’t know that. You don’t even know what I was going to say,” protested Martin.

“No, but I know _you_ , Martin, and any plan of yours is bound to fail,” Douglas said. “What we need is to convince Carolyn that the iguana died from completely natural causes.”

“Natural? The vet was just by, said the damn thing would probably live to be twenty!”

“Mmm, yes, well, thankfully, Nature can be a cruel mistress.”

“Douglas? What are you thinking?”

Without answering, Douglas turned and looked across the vast array of cages and terrariums and aquariums that made up MPN, My Petshop Now, to where a certain young sales associate—more of a customer, really, with a hat—was enthusiastically playing with the puppies, who were yipping in excitement and jumping all over his pants with their little paws. 

“Oh, Arthur?” 

“Yes, Douglas?”

“Could you come here for a moment?”

“Oh, sure!” Arthur jumped up, in his haste, forgetting to latch the cages. Like a particularly fluffy plague of Egypt, a flood of small yapping dogs poured out of the open door and ran amok about the shop, sending the birds into shrieks of rage, the kittens to back against the corner, hissing and growling their displeasure, and generally plunging the entire shop into utter chaos.

It was perfect, Douglas thought with a small, gratified smile at yet another one of his plans working brilliantly.

“Quick, Martin,” he hissed under the ruckus. “Grab that damn lizard and throw it out somewhere Carolyn won’t find it. But before you do, cut off its tail.”

“What?” Martin’s voice squawked indignantly.

“Just do it!” Douglas said, shoving him in the direction of the reptile section. Martin scurried off just as Carolyn came rushing out of the back.

“What on Earth—” she cried out, looking around at the mess. Arthur was running in circles, trying unsuccessfully to herd the escaped canines back into their cages. It had the side effect of getting them even more excited and pouncing around causing more damage. Douglas leaned on the counter, watching the whole thing with a detached gaze.

“Arthur!” Carolyn’s voice rose above the din. “STOP. RUNNING. AROUND.”

Arthur froze like a statue in the midst of it all.

Martin suddenly reappeared, looking slightly ill. “Here,” he said, thrusting something limp and green into Douglas’s hands. “Though I don’t know why you wanted me to desecrate its little cold-blooded corpse.”

“Attend.”

Douglas slipped around him unnoticed by Carolyn, who had devoted her attentions to shouting at Arthur and Martin both. He carefully tipped the cage on its side, its rocks and fake flora spilling artfully across the floor. That done, he grabbed one of the puppies and calmed it in his arms, scratching it behind its ears until it gave a yawn. He carefully stuck the end of the iguana’s tail into its mouth, letting it droop suspiciously over its little fuzzy chest.

“Oh, Carolyn,” Douglas said mildly, walking in with the puppy chewing contentedly on the thing. “I believe we have a problem.”

“What is it, Douglas?” Carolyn snapped, whirling on him. Her eyes caught the tail trailing dismally from the puppy’s tiny little mouth. “Tell me that isn’t—”

Douglas nodded. “I’m afraid so, Carolyn.”

Carolyn moaned. “That was the most magnificent—it was—”

“Yes,” Douglas sympathised. “It certainly was.”

Carolyn massaged her forehead. “At least now I won’t have to pay for that bloody thing’s vet visits anymore.”

Martin and Douglas exchanged glances.

“What do you mean?” Martin said cautiously. “He said the thing would probably live to be twenty.”

“Yes, if he continued to come by and dose it with medicine. The dratted thing had picked up some disease or another. There was little chance I would be able to sell it with that. No one wants a sick iguana,” Carolyn said. “But nothing to be done for it.”

She pointed at Arthur, most of her anger drained in the initial outburst. “Arthur, clean up this mess. Douglas, dispose of that disgusting tail before the puppy eats it and catches whatever the iguana had. Martin… oh, just try not to mess anything up.”

Arthur scurried off to obey his mother’s commands, leaving Douglas and Martin standing behind the counter, looking at each other.

“Do you suppose,” Martin began hesitantly.

“That it might not have been your fault? That the thing could have croaked on its own?”

“Iguanas don’t croak,” Martin said absently. Douglas rolled his eyes at the pun. “But. I mean, do you think—”

“The world,” Douglas said, hefting the puppy onto the counter, where it coughed up the tail, yawned again, and curled into a small little ball, “may never know. But far more importantly, _Carolyn_ will never know.”


End file.
